In Search of DA
Richard Davis, Bridges Specialist - Tennessee School for the Deaf
Education today is seeing monumental changes
occurring. From high stakes testing, to teachers
being scrutinized as never before as law makers
continue to dictate classroom procedures with their
yearly evaluations. Tenure is becoming a concept
of the past with the fear of inept teachers having a
license to continue their job with no real recourse.
Teaching models are being developed and adopted
by the various school systems across the country.
There are so many initialed and acronymed programs
now, school programs are starting to look more like
alpha-bit soup.
During my thirty eight years in education, I have seen
an evolution of education as to how it is now practiced.
When I first started teaching there appeared to be
the art of teaching which turned into the science
of teaching and now that is being melded a blend
of science and politics of teaching. Teachers at one
time were held with high respects, but today teachers
seem to be the causation of society’s misfortunes and
every child’s failures.
I first want to address the subject of tenure. What is
tenure and why has it became such a vile concept
for the public? Most everyone’s notion of tenure is
that tenure is a permanent license to teach whereas a
teacher cannot be fired. That is so wrong. Teaching is
a profession whereas at the end of each school year,
the teacher technically looses his/her job and must be
invited back the following year. So basically teachers
work each year on a one year contract. Without some
sort of check and balance system, a teacher can be
let go at the end of a school year without any reason.
Now notice I did not say get fired. A teacher could
just simply not be rehired for the next school year.
In a perfect world this would be ok. As if a teacher
was not cut out to do the job, or just was not a good
teacher, they could be let go, even with dignity. But
we do not live in a perfect world. What happens when
there is a strong teacher who has a personality conflict
with an administrator? The administrator could be
the weak one, but has the power to simply not rehire
the teacher. In many school districts there have been
many teachers let go to make room for a relative of
an administrator or even a relative of a politician,
such as a school board member or superintendent.
What tenure does, and was set to do, was to prevent
this from happening. Now a teacher does not get
tenure immediately. In most cases, the teacher has to
be invited back for the fourth time or in other words
have three years of experience. The thought pattern
of this means that you have three years to show that
you are a quality teacher. If during that time it is
deemed that the teacher is not cut out for the job or
just maybe the teacher and school are not a good fit,
the teacher will not be invited back. Now after three
years, does it mean the teacher has a job for life and
cannot be let go? NO! It does NOT mean that. I have
seen several teachers let go after they have received
tenure for various reasons. We have all seen in the
news teachers who have been appropriately let go
for behaviors that are not allowed. What tenure does
is requires the school system to put a tenured teacher
to be let go through a due process to show why they
are not going to be allowed to teach any more in that
system. Tenure does not protect bad teachers. Is this
not what we all want? Does anyone want a job where
they can just be told you are no longer accepted here
without reason?
Teaching models are constantly being developed and
improved upon, but do you realize that many models
are being created by folks that have never been a
teacher in the classroom or at least in past ten years?
I love it when we have teacher in-services to help us
become better teachers as the high paid lecturer is
lecturing us on how the worst way to teach is through
lecturing. Or we do these hokey activities that we
know our students are going to look at us and say
“Unh uh, I ain’t doing that”. Through the years I have
seen so many models and programs come and go.
It’s almost like watching clothes fashion. You know
sooner or later bell bottoms will be back again. But
in most cases all the models and programs all have
something in common. And that is they are trying to
fix teachers. Now I am not saying that some teachers
do not need to be fixed, but when you have a
classroom with thirty students and twenty six of them
are succeeding and four are not, there is probably
nothing wrong with the teacher. Very few programs
focus on what’s wrong with the student. For a student
to be successful, that student must bring to class
certain skills and abilities that are required for learning.
If they do not have those skills and abilities, they will
never get the information no matter how good the
teacher is. Let’s find the programs that focus on the
student and fixing them. There is a saying used with
the Bridges Program that says, “It is easier to build
a child, than to fix an adult”. So let’s focus on that.